One of my favorite lines in all of literature comes from the great (and unknown) Mark Harris. If this sentence intrigues you and you want to read a bit of Harris, I'd suggest you pick up either "Bang the Drum Slowly," his most famous work, or "Wake Up, Stupid," his funniest.
In any event, the line I love is from the aforementioned "Bang the Drum Slowly." It is "the only hero is the man without heroes." (As an aside, my favorite line of all is from another 'baseball writer,' Ring Lardner. It is: "'Shut up,' he explained.")
I think about Harris' line in the wake of the stupidity from the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch who does his best to discriminate against customers who might be "adipose endowed."
I don't really give a rat's ass about the CEO of Abercrombie. What absolutely baffles me is people who are emblazoned with brand names like walking billboards.
This, to me, is the marketing equivalent of hero worship. A dangerous practice, because most heroes have feet of clay.
When I was 11, the New York Mets, after a decade of fumbling mediocrity emerged as the winner of the World Series. Somehow my father got tickets to the game in which the Mets clinched the pennant by beating the Atlanta Braves.
At the end of the game, some large portion of the 50,000 people in attendance stormed the field at Shea Stadium and ripped the turf as souvenirs. I ran onto the field and was taking it all in and somehow in my youthful oblivion, wandered almost directly into the Braves' dugout.
There sat, a hero, Hank Aaron sitting dejectedly and taking long drags on a cigarette.
I remember thinking "How could a great like Aaron smoke cigarettes."
That was my first lesson in seeing "heroes" as just people with superior skills.
I think the same can be applied to Abercrombie & Fitch.
They're just clothes, people. They're sold by pricks here. And made by near-slaves in Asia.
If you use them to define you, you're a tool.
